Thanks David, I did not know that! That protection is good to have when a
big truck trying to maintain speed is coming up behind me and I'm really
shifting fast.

I once had the throttle stick (after-market cruise control) on my '84 and
learned first-hand that the ECU cuts off the fuel to prevent over revving.
Wow, designing in protective systems, what a concept!

The blue lights are somewhat calming and remind me that I need to get going
on that Subaru engine.

BTW, 140k at an average of 35 mph is probably 4000 hours on those lights,
which is good, but LEDs should last 5 or 10 times longer. Most of my dash
lights were dead too when I bought the van,  but I replaced them with
incandescents--for now!  I'm trying to make everything last as long as I'm
likely to now, which probably isn't hard to do.

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: David Beierl [mailto:dbeierl@gmail.com] On Behalf Of David Beierl
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 5:49 PM
To: Stuart MacMillan
Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: For auto trans owners only

At 08:34 PM 7/15/2013, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>Remember, they are on when the ignition is on.  Not cheap, but neither
>are the ones from the dealer, and with all the downshifting on hills
>required I need the lights for night driving.

You haven't noticed perhaps that you can shift from D to 2 and back very
conveniently without looking?  VW very kindly allow you to do this without
depressing the lock button, so there's no chance of overshifting into low.
Not saying you don't want lights there** but I don't actually look at them
much.

**given that the lights there are wired in series so they run at
half-voltage, the incandescents ought to last almost as long as LEDs...

Cheers,
d